It was also a fantastic opportunity for winning! There were four potential prizes for the conference: Best paper, best poster, best 5-minute madness presentation, and a dinner quiz. And Team Napier won them all! In fact, three of the four were won by me! (I didn’t submit for the fourth, so I’m not bitter about not winning that one.)

In order of prize announcement, here’s how the awards went down:

Dinner QuizI was on a team with my officemate, John Mowbray. Our team (Winners or Losers, Delete As Appropriate) won by half a point. Another officemate (Iris Buunk) and my PhD supervisor (Hazel Hall) were on the second place team.

Best 5 minute madness presentation (open to PhD students)
I took this prize (which came with a £25 Amazon gift certificate) for my presentation on my PhD research. It was a quick overview of my research themes, methods, and progress to date. The winner was selected by the conference programme committee at the conference, and I was a bit surprised to have won.

Best poster (open to all)Iris Buunk took this well-deserved prize for her poster ‘Easier, better, faster’. The winner was selected by a delegate vote at the conference. The poster was very well designed with clear, easy to understand text. It was clearly the winner! (And as I didn’t have a poster, I am not at all bitter about not winning!)

The winner for this category was decided by anonymous peer review of all papers refereed prior to the conference. That means that the award was based on the text and the text alone. Not me as a person; not my presentation of the work. And that is such a great boost for my confidence!

As I said, it was a winning conference. And all that winning has done wonders for my self-confidence and self-esteem. If I can keep this energy up, I’ll be back on track with my PhD submission before I know it!

Also: It really must be said that these great honours would not have happened without the guidance (and co-authorship) of my amazing set of supervisors. So to them, I extend my absolute gratitude!